“And how are they to be manifested by your waiting on in Dunkerque?” she asked, recovering her colour and some of her ordinary manner.
How indeed? She had no need to ask me the question, for it was already ringing through my being. That the Spoiled Horn from Mearns, an outlaw with blood on his hands and borrowed money in his pocket, should have the presumption to feel any ardour for this creature seemed preposterous to myself, and I flushed in an excess of shame and confusion.
This seemed completely to reassure her. “Oh, Mr. Greig—Mr. Greig, was I not right to ask if ye were the man ye seemed? Here's a nice display o' gallantry from my giant son! I believe you are just makin' fun o' this auld wife; and if no' I hae just one word for you, Paul Greig, and it's this that I said afore—jist havers!”
She went to her spinet and ran her fingers over the keys and broke into a song—
Oh, what ails the laddie, new twined frae his mither?
The laddie gallantin' roun' Tibbie and me?—
with glances coquettish yet repelling round her shoulder at me as I stood turning my chapeau-de-bras in my hand as a boy turns his bonnet in presence of laird or dominie. The street was shaking now with the sound of marching soldiers, whose platoons were passing in a momentary silence of trumpet or drum. All at once the trumpets blared forth just in front of the house, broke upon her song, and gave a heavensent diversion to our comedy or tragedy or whatever it was in the parlour.
We both stood looking out at the window for a while in silence, watching the passing troops, and when the last file had gone, she turned with a change of topic “If these men had been in England ten years ago,” she said, “when brisk affairs were doing there with Highland claymores, your Uncle Andrew would have been there, too, and it would not perhaps be your father who was Laird of Hazel Den. But that's all by with now. And when do you set out with Father Hamilton?”
She had a face as serene as fate; my heart ached to tell her that I loved her, but her manner made me hold my tongue on that.
“In three days,” I said, still turning my hat and wishing myself elsewhere, though her presence intoxicated.
“In three days!” she said, as one astonished. “I had thought it had been a week at the earliest. Will I tell you what you might do? You are my great blate bold son, you know, from the moors of Mearns, and I will be wae, wae, to think of you travelling all round Europe without a friend of your own country to exchange a word with. Write to me; will you?”